7 papers
KASER: Knowledge-Aligned Student Error Simulator for Open-Ended Coding Tasks
Zhangqi Duan, Nigel Fernandez, Andrew Lan
Open-ended tasks, such as coding problems that are common in computer science education, provide detailed insights into student knowledge. However, training large language models (…
Automated Knowledge Component Generation for Interpretable Knowledge Tracing in Coding Problems
Zhangqi Duan, Nigel Fernandez, Arun Balajiee Lekshmi Narayanan +5
Knowledge components (KCs) mapped to problems help model student learning, tracking their mastery levels on fine-grained skills thereby facilitating personalized learning and feedb…
RADAR: Reasoning-Ability and Difficulty-Aware Routing for Reasoning LLMs
Nigel Fernandez, Branislav Kveton, Ryan A. Rossi +2
Reasoning language models have demonstrated remarkable performance on many challenging tasks in math, science, and coding. Choosing the right reasoning model for practical deployme…
SMART: Simulated Students Aligned with Item Response Theory for Question Difficulty Prediction
Alexander Scarlatos, Nigel Fernandez, Christopher Ormerod +2
Item (question) difficulties play a crucial role in educational assessments, enabling accurate and efficient assessment of student abilities and personalization to maximize learnin…
LookAlike: Consistent Distractor Generation in Math MCQs
Nisarg Parikh, Nigel Fernandez, Alexander Scarlatos +2
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to generate distractors for multiple-choice questions (MCQs), especially in domains like math education. However, existing approa…
Test Case-Informed Knowledge Tracing for Open-ended Coding Tasks
Zhangqi Duan, Nigel Fernandez, Alexander Hicks +1
Open-ended coding tasks, which ask students to construct programs according to certain specifications, are common in computer science education. Student modeling can be challenging…